Sunday, August 16, 2009

Judge Me By My Size, Do You?

And well you should not. For my ally is the Forcier. And a powerful ally he is.- Yoda, 1 foot-6 inch, 30 lbs., 900 Year Old Senior Slot Receiver

OK, so sometimes I too can get carried away and need to retire to my nerdery with my calculator.

And I'm pretty sure I'm not the only Michigan football recruiting geek to have been slightly spooked about the smaller-sized skilled position players that now populate the Wolverine football roster. Observations and tweet messages from sports bloggers and national sports reporters during Michigan's first week of fall practice picked up on the apparent changes in Wolverine player stature as well. Of course there’s also a growing list of 3-star, sub-six foot recruits and commits brought in to play cornerback, tailback or slot receiver positions.

Rich Rodriguez’s spread offense doesn’t specify any particular player height or weight to play running back, slot receiver or outside receiver, or even quarterback. If such specs for skilled position players were ever written down for Rodriguez's read spread option offense, they'd probably include:

A. Under 6 feet tall

B. 4.6 sec 40 yard dash times or better,

C. Strength and athleticism to break open field tackles, and

D. Ability to fracture the ankles of oncoming defenders by making laser-precision, jock-removing jukes and cuts in the open field.

Michigan Freshman Running Back Vincent Smith

Football players of any size can certainly achieve the above. However, there’s been an interesting trend in offensive player profile and player size under Rodriguez, especially when we view some of the highest performing players at skilled positions like the quarterback, tailback and slot receiver positions over his coaching career.

Size of Impact Players At TulaneI’ve probably written way too much about Rich Rodriguez’s stint at Tulane on this Michigan blog already. But it is an instructional reference point for Rodriguez’s first fully-fledged read spread option attack at the Division I level. As you can see from the 1998 season, there were several impact players under 6 feet tall and well under 200 lbs.

Size of Impact Players At ClemsonRodriguez was the offensive coordinator for 2 years under Tommy Bowden at Clemson, 1999-2000. The Tiger slot receivers and wide receivers were much taller than at Tulane. Travis Zachery was the main running back in 2000.

Size of Impact Players At West VirginiaRodriguez coached at WVU for 7 years. I select the 2002 and 2007 seasons as samples with the size and weight of some of the top performances over this period, not repeating names:

Impact Player Size And The Power of the Forcier At Scripps Ranch High SchoolTate Forcier is not a huge quarterback by any means. He’s only 6-0, 190 lbs. and entering year 1 of the Michigan football strength and conditioning program of Mike Barwis. Forcier was a very accurate thrower, especially during his senior season of high shcool, when he connected on 65% of this throws for 3,331 yards and 23 TD passes. His top receiving targets on the Scripps Ranch football team last year, as one might expect at the high school level, were (with one exception) rather smallish in size:

Impact Player Size At MichiganSince Rodriguez’s arrival in Ann Arbor, he’s continued to place quite a high level of emphasis on player speed and athleticism for the quarterback running back and slot receiver positions, as well as the defensive backfield. One cannot help but notice the physical stature of some of these lightning quick additions to the 2008 Michigan roster:

Rodriguez clearly doesn’t mind going after smaller-sized players, as he knows they will be well-conditioned by the time they hit the field and have the skills to perform their duties in this offense. Given the many examples at Tulane, Clemson and West Virginia, any panic about Rodriguez’s affinity for recruiting smaller profile players may be misplaced. Besides this, many Michigan fans may recognize the names of several high-impact players at Michigan over the last 40 years. Perhaps it’s comforting to know that a great many of these Wolverine players didn’t exactly arrive to Ann Arbor in “extra large” packaging:

3 comments:

I don't think the case is necessarily that Rodriguez prefers smaller players, but rather that smaller players are more likely to have the skill set he craves (great quickness, balance, and change of direction) that bigger players.

If he could land a 6-1 player with the same quickness and speed as a shorter guy, he'd almost certainly go for the bigger one. At West Virginia he's never been able to recruit the top-top guys with size AND that skill set (of course, Noel Devine was a top-top guy but didn't have the height). Once he builds up enough depth in the slot at MIchigan, and hopefully is able to be more selective in recruiting, you won't exclusively see tiny guys.

I contend that a significantly smaller than average, albeit a faster, team will ultimately be "worn down" by a larger, slower team. One or two "smallish" players can work in many different schemes, as evidenced in both college and pro level teams. But you rarely see more than 1 or 2 on the field at any given time. I think if you load your college team up with small, fast guys at most positions, you may defeat lower tier teams, but in the long haul, will lose, regardless of how good your execution is. For example...could the top US High School team...one that executes nearly flawlessly, compete with any D-1 team. I wouldn't think so. Have any studies been attempted on this? Just curious.